












%'^^-/ **.*^^V 'o^'^^-/ ■ 







<> ♦-t: 



..^^\ 






><1^ . 







** .''■"• 













o>' 




'^0* 





















V 




<► ♦ 

"•*>^ 
.* "^^ 















%.*" 



SPEECH 



OF 



>^^ 



Hon. A. W. MACK, 



ON THE 



SLAVERY, QUESTION 



IN THE 



STATE SENATE, 



JANUAKY 20, 1866. 



SPKINGFIELD: 

BAKER & PHILLIPS, PRINTERS. 
1865. 



nJ 






SPEECH. 



Mr. MACK called up the joint resolution asking the Illinois 
members of the Senate and House of Representatives of the Uni- 
ted States, to use their endeavors to induce Congress to take 
measures to amend the Constitution of the United States by the 
abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude in all the states and 
territories. 

Mr. MACK. Mr. Speaker — The wise physician, who treats 
successfully the diseases of the human body, informs himself not 
only of the symptoms and pathological conditions of a case sub- 
mitted to his care, but with the utmost patience and skill he inves- 
tigates the causes that have produced the malady, that by their 
suppression or removal he may expedite the cure and prevent a 
recurrence of the attack. 

So the sagacious statesman, who is called upon to minister to the 
diseases of the body politic, stops not at the simple effort to paliate 
or relieve the active symptoms of national distemper, but, searching 
out the cause, strikes boldly at the root, that he may exterminate 
the evil forever. 

In considering the giant malady that is threatening the life of 
our country, the civil war, in whose footsteps follow death and 
desolation, let us direct our attention to the great cause from which 
it has originated. 

There are two great antagonistic forms of government arrayed 
against each other in the present contest. 

On one side we have a government based upon the truths enun- 
ciated in our Declaration of Independence, " that all men are crea- 
ted equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain in- 
alienable rights, that among these are Ufe, liberty, and the pursuits' 



£*- 



i 



of happiness," while on the other side, we have a government dc- 
hned by one of its founders, in contradistinction to the old govern- 
ment, as a govermnent "fonndedon exactly opposite ideaf," and 
the hrst n, he history of the world based upon the great .noral 
and philosophical truth, that slavery is the natural and moral eondi 
tioii of the negro race." ^-^i^ui 

I shall endeavor to show, on this occasion, that the existing, re- 
- belhon m this country is the culmination of that irrepressible "con- 
flict between these two antagonistic forms of government, that has 
been going on smce the formation of the Federal Union, the final 
act o rebellion being the last resort of the slave power that de 
teated m its contest with freedom could only hope to live' by sepa" 
rating entirely from its too powerful antagonist. ' 

At the time of the organization of the Federal Government Afri- 
can slavery existed as an exceptional and declining institutioi, that 
m the estimation of the wisest statesmen of the age was des ined 
rapidly to disappear before the powerful influence and under the 
r! ^'^:sn of a pure republic. In the language of Mr. Stephens, of 
Georgui, "The ideas entertained at the time of the formation of 
the old constitution, were that the enslavement of tJie African 
race was m violation of the laws of nature ; that it was wron<. in 
pnnciple, socially, morally and politically." In addition to this 
there were economic causes tending to its overthrow at the time' 
It is a well established fact, that slave labor can only be profitably 
employed m the raising of a few staples, such as cotton, sugar, rice 
indigo and tobacco. Of these, only rice, indigo and t;bacco were 
staple produc s of the slave states at the time of the establishment 
of the Federal Union. Sugar was not yet grown in the Union, and 
cotton was as yet an unimportant crop, restricted to the long-fibered 
sea island ^ety. India was rapidly supplanting this country in 
the production of indigo and rice, while tobacco was already pro- 
duced 111 quantities more than sufficient to supply the market. 

The S3^stem of slave labor, therefore, was not only obnoxious to 
the republican form of government that had been organized, but 
1 was economically a decaying and profitless institution. Vith 
the sympathies of mankind against it, and having no stron.. hold 
upon the mterests of the people, the expectation ^o sanguinely in- 
du ged of Its rapid decline and ultimate extinction, was certainly 
well founded. "^ 



Yerj soou after the organization of our Government, however, 
several causes came into operation, the eflect of which was to in- 
fuse into the shave system a vitality that enabled it for many years 
to drive back the tide of freedom, and bid fair to completely revolu- 
tionize the republican ideas upon which the Union was organized. 

First came the application, about this time, of steam power to 
manufacturing purposes, contemporaneously with the inventions in 
cotton spinning, by Compton, Hargreaves & Arkwright, and next, 
and far above all these in its influence upon the destinies of slavery 
in this country, was the invention, by Whitney, of the cotton gin, 
by which the seed was separated from the wool in the short stapled 
varity of cotton, with such facility and success as at once to bring 
the whole American crop within the limits of profitable cultivation. 
Cotton being, in this country, almost exclusively a slave product, 
the etfect of these various inventions and appliances was rapidly 
developed to the increase of slave labor and a corresponding 
growth and extension of slavery and slaveholding interests in the 
country. 

In addition to this, in ISOi, an immense country was acquired 
by purchase from France, consisting of some of the richest portions 
of the valley of the Mississippi, and adapted, throughout a large 
part of its extent, to the raising of cotton and sugar. This latter staple 
being equally with cotton adapted to slave labor, added another strong 
link to the great chain of interests so rapidly daveloped in favor 
of the slave power ; and the pernicious system of slavery, so ob- 
noxious to every sentiment of justice, so iiital to every interest of . 
humanity, thus fostered and sustained by the selfish interests of 
mankind, spread rapidly along the valley of the Mississippi until it 
reached the territory that now forms the State of Missouri, and in 
1818 acquired there a power sufficient to demand for this territory 
admission into the Union as a slave state. 

The contest which followed, developed in its full intensity, the 
inherent antagonism between the two great systems of free and 
slave labor, but to understand the nature and importance of this 
contest it is necessary that we should fully comprehend its motives 
and necessities. It is utterly impossible for slavery to remain long 
a passive institution. Its aggressive character is a necessity of 
its existence, and is due to the presence of two principles, one 
economic and the other political. 



"Slave labor by its necessary coni5nemeiit to the raising of a few 
great staples, precluding the rotation of crops, and by its entire 
lack of skillful culture exhausting the soil of a country, in a few 
years compels the slave holder to seek out new and fertile lands' 
for profitable cultivation." 

This economic necessity of slavery originates in the radical de- 
fects of slave labor. "Defects which result from the compulsory 
ignorance of the slave and the lack of an intelligent interest in his 
work." 

Governor Wise, in 1855, speaking of the agriculture of Virginia, 
said : "You own plenty of lands, but.it is poor land added t^^poor 
land, and nothing added to nothing makes nothing. You have 
the owners skinning the negroes and the negroes skiiming the 
land, and all grow poor together." 

Mr. G. S. Sullivan, of Lincoln county, I^orth Carolina, in the 
Patent Office report for 1857, says: "Ve raise no stock of any 
kind, except for home consumption, and not half enough for that, 
for we have now worn out our lands,'So much so that we do not 
grow food enough to maintain them." 

And Mr. Clay of Alabama has described in sad accents the deso- 
lation of portions of his own native state. "One will discern," he 
says, "numerous farm houses, once the abode of industrious and 
intelligent freemen, now occupied by slaves or tenanters, deserted 
and dilapidated. He will observe fields once fertile, now unfenced, 
abandoned, and covered with those evil harbingers, fox tail and 
broom ^edge; he will see the moss growiug on the mouldering 
walls of once thrifty villages, and will find one only master grasps 
the whole domain that once furnished happy hon'ies for a^dozen 
white families. Indeed, a country in its infancy, where fifty years 
ago scarce a forest tree had been felled by the axe of the pioneer, 
is already existing the painful signs of senility and decay, appa- 
rent in Virginia and the Carolinas. The freshness of its agricultu- 
ral glory is gone, the vigor of its youth extinct, and the spirit of 
desolation seems brooding over it." 

This economic i)rinciple in the political economy of slave society 
that demands a constant supply of fresh soils of high fertility for 
permanent industrial success, is one, about which no controversy 
can be said to exist, being as fully recognized by the unholders as 
by the opponents of slavery. 



"There is not a slave holder in this house," says Judge "Warner, 
f Georgia, "or out of it, but who knows perfectly well that when- 
■ver slavery is confined within certain specified limits its future 
xtension is doomed ; it is only a question of time as to its final 
iestruction. You may take any single slaveholding county in 
he Southern States in which the great staples of cotton and sugar 
ire cultivated to any great extent, and confine the present slave 
population within the limits of said county, such is the rapid nata- 
lal increase of the slaves, and the rapid exhaustion of the soil in 
(he cultivation of these crops, that in a few years it would be im- 
possible to support them within the limits of said county. Both 
the master and slave would be starved out." But while the natu- 
rally aggressive character of slavery proceeds primarily from this 
well known economic fact of the necessary limitation of slave cul- 
ture to soils of more than average richness combined with a ten- 
dency to exhaust them ; still the active development of the spirit of 
jilavery propagandism in this country is more immediately attribu- 
table to the great political necessities of the slave power, "the lust 
for dominion which is its ruling passion inherent in the fundamen- 
tal institutions of the slave States," and under our form of govern- 
ment finds its issue in territorial aggrandizement as an indispensa- 
ble requisite to the preservation of the balance of power in the 
Federal Union. 

The Federal Constitution is a compromise between two princi- 
ples—the democratic principle of representation by numbers, and 
the federal principle of representation by states. In the House the 
democratic and in the Senate the federal principle was adopted, 
each State having the same representation in the Senate without 
regard to extent or population, while in the election of President 
these principles were combined, the electoral vote of each State 
being represented by the number of its Senators and Representa- 
tives\nited. In the application of the democratic principle, how- 
ever, a decided advantage was given to the slaveholding States by 
the three-fifths rule, by which the slaves are counted as a basis of 
representation in the proportion of five slaves for every three white 
persons. 

Under such a form of government the balance of political power 
could only be maintained by the South by keeping the number of 
slave States equal to the free States, so that the senatorial repre- 



beyond al fl,i ti <^'=t """■ ^""g'-""'"! farther north. But 

'rtldnitTM^/tiTar 

free and sla.e states werrexact ' Toll 'f "'"''^We. The 

ora.^r';s rr; --■ "" '"^eTat^^vr -: 

or against tlie bouth. It is not npopq^nr-tr +K„f t i, n F""'«^ lor 

The contemporaneous admission of Maine as a frPP «fnfn . ^ 
the equilibrium of power in the SPT..f. i M - ^' '"^'^^''^^ 
the Southern 011^0^ and t^^ '^ ''' '^'° ^"'^'"^ 

to the ad.anta,ef 1"C C IXi^n^tlttl 

=;s;:;;:;r^:: ^- -^-^ -- - ~ theTo^ 

Having thus secured the control of the Federal Government the 
sities of the slave power were rapidlv developed Ld nr. f ! t 

~:t2 Sir" "•' '- " "" ^^-^^^ 

the extension of the slave power The ohL • n •^' ''''^ 

«>ea..„ set forth in an ^^^rS;^^ ^Z^^^^^^^TX 



Quincy Adams, by several members of Congress, in which they 
say: 

"That a large portion of the country interested in the continu- 
ance of domestic slavery, and the slave trade in the United States, 
have solemnly and unalterably determined that it (the annexation 
of Texas,) shall be speedily carried into execution, and that by this 
admission of new slave territory and slave states, the undue ascen- 
dency of the slave-holding power in the government shall be secured 
and riveted beyond all redemption." 

The annexation of Texas was speedily followed by the war with 
Mexico, resulting in the acquisition, by the treaty of 1848, of that 
immense range of territory extending from Texas to the Pacific 
ocean, and from Mexico to Oregon, and including the rich prize of 
California. 

And then came another great contest between the slave power 
and freedom, which was terminated by the Compromise Measures 
of 1850. 

The Creator, in his infinite wisdom, had been hiding away for 
unnumbered ages countless millions of gold in the rocks and sands 
of California, and when the great struggle was about to comnience 
between freedom and slavery, for the possession of this territory, 
the long hidden treasure was uncovered to human eyes and the 
hardy sons of toil invited to the harvest. It was a contest in which 
the genius and enterprise of free labor were sure to triumph. And 
the free men of the North, who, by thousands, pursued their long 
and toilsome journey over desert plains and icy mountains to this 
land of promise, carried with them a treasure richer than all the 
mines of earth, for they carried with them the seeds of that grand 
old God-given idea that had germinated in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and they scattered them broadcast over that noble West- 
ern Empire, to glisten like diamonds among her golden sands. And 
the fruit thereof was Liberty ! Free labor was the magic lamp by 
which cities and towns, churches and school houses, manufactories 
and railroads, and all the wonderful appliances of civilization and 
art, were created with marvellous rapidity and skill, and before 
which the Slave Power fled, wounded and crippled, back to its old 
domain. INot yet to die, however, but to conceive some new vil- 
lainy against the rights of man. And the period of incubation of 
the serpent brood was brief indeed, for scarcely had the country 



10 



begun to breathe freely after the contest of 1860, before another 
and more fearful issue was forced upon it by the Kansas and Ne-I 
braska struggle. ' I 

Up to this period, the balance of power between the free and' 
slave states had been fairly preserved, but the admission of Cali- 
lornia as a free state disturbed the equihbrium and gave to the 
North a majority in the Senate. The army of freedom, by a bril- 
liant flank movement, had placed its banners securely in the rear 
of the foe, and the situation had become all at once exceedino-ly 
perilous to the slave power. To restore the equilibrium and neu- 
tralize the effect of the free labor settlements in California, a new 
slave state must be created, and a territory occupied by the South 
that would cut off the gallant band of free men on the Pacific from 
their friends and allies in the JSTorth. For the accomplishment of 
these purposes the rich territory of Kansas was most conveniently 
situated, lymg directly westward from the great slave state of Mis- 
souri, Its acquisition by the South was an indispensable link in the 
chain of slave states to be continued westward across the continent. 
Kansas became, therefore, at once the great objective point in the 
strategetic movements of the slave party. 

But there was one apparently insurmountable obstacle in the 
way. This territory was a part of the Louisiana purchase, and was 
North of the line traced by the Missouri Compromise. This -'sa- 
cred compact" had secured to the South the most commanding po- 
sition on the continent, for which immediate and substantial advan- 
tage to the North had received the solemn guarantee that all the 
territory lying North of the line of 36 deg. 30 North latitude, should 
be forever free. This concession, at the time, was regarded as of 
little value by the South, but the wondrous events that followed the 
accidental discovery of gold in California had frustrated the well 
laid plans of the slave party, while the indomitable energy and en- 
terprise of the free laborers of the North were rapidly convertincr 
the savage territories of the North-west into "inchoate States," soon 
to be numbered among the brilliant stars of the Northern constella. 
tion. 

Every principle of honor and good faith were combined to make' 
the Missouri Compromise binding upon the part of the South. But 
what have principles of honor and good f-iith to do with slavery and 
ts inexorable necessities? The will to violate any obligation, no 



11 

matter how sacred, was not wanting on the part of the bnyers and 
sellers of their fellow men. But some plausible pretext must be 
found by which their Democratic allies at the North could be se- 
duced into the support of their nefarious schemes, and this the fer- 
tile resources of political leaders soon supplied. A bill for the or- 
ganization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska was intro- 
duced into Congress, in which the Missouri Compromise was de- 
clared inoperative and void, as "being inconsistent witli the prmci- 
ple of non-intervention, by Congress with slavery in the States or 
Territories, as recognized by the compromise measures of 1850, and 
the popular and highly plausible principle was substituted of leav- 
ing the people of the Territory "perfectly free to form and regulate 
their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the 
constitution of the United States." The bait took, and was greedily 
swallowed by thousands of honest and well meaning men at the 
North, who iiad not the remotest suspicion that, hidden in it, was the 
barbed hook of slavery propagandism. But, though the enemy thus 
threw down the outer walls, they had not yet captured the citadel. 
The tocsin of alarm had been sounded at the North, and the plow- 
man from the furrow, and the mechanic from the shop, dropped 
the implements of labor and hurried to the fields of contest, to ac- 
cept the gauntlet of popular sovereignty thrown down by the South, 
and test upon the soil of the Territory, the right of free labor as 
against the arrogant assumptions of the slave power. 

You are all familiar with the history of the memorable struggle, 
and you know how, in spite of fraud, corruption and force, and the 
countenance and active support of the federal administration, the 
genius of liberty led the hosts of freedom triumphantly through the 
contest. But there was one episode in the great battle between 
freedom and slavery that demands our especial notice, as marking 
the period when the first split was made, into which the wedge was 
ultimately to be driven that would separate the slave party from its 
friends and allies at the North. 

The fact was rapidly being developed that the South was no 
match for the North in an open fight for the possession of the Ter- 
ritories, and that in spite of border ruffians, slave codes, test laws, 
and election frauds, Kansas would be forever lost to the slave party, 
if the principle of populai" sovereignty was fairly adhered to, and 
then with the most unblushing impudence the bait was torn off", 



12 



and Mr. Douglas and his friends were required to swallow the 
naked hook with its newly forged Leeompton barb. 

How proudly amidst the dark record of that stormy period'ean 

the friends of human liberty point to these bright spots, where the 

pages are consecrated by the noble words with which the great 

eader of the Northern Democracy repudiated the demandsfand 

bid defiance to the threats of the slave power. 

That hour was the beginning of the end, and the doom of slavery 
was written upon the parchment that secured to Kansas a free con- 



stitution 



Defeated but not destroyed, the slave power still continued the 
imequal contest, and utterly rejecting all its former specious pre- 
texts and political sinuosities, struck directly at the root of the old 
Kepubhcan ideas that had prevailed at the formation of the Federal 
Union, and boldly announced the dogma that the constitution with 
Its overriding power in the ij>so facto carried slavery into all the 
Territories, and that neither Congress nor the Territorial Legisla- 
ture had any power to prevent its existence there. 

To make available this daring proposition, however, two thino-s 
were needed First, a judicial decision by the supreme court ^f 
the United States in its f-ivor; and second, an administration that 
would give practical effect to the decision when obtained. The 
tamous Dred Scott case soon furnished the coveted opportunity for 
procuring a judicial sanction to this political doctrine that would 
have disgraced the despotism of the middle ages. 

I yield to no man in a due regard for tlj ministers of justice 
when clothed with the majesty of law. Bat when a court steps 

Its repoits with opinions that would have made Jefiries doubly 
nfamous, I claim a freeman's right to denounce the act as an out- 
rage upon the age, the country and the constitution. 

dec^dod'T r'"' '"' '^ '°"^' "P°" "" ^'^''' ^" abatement, it being 
decided that a negro is not a citizen of the United States within 

lie meaning of the constitution, and therefore not qualified o 
b ccnneaparty tosuit in the Federal courts. But til dedsion 
did not cover the ground occupied by the slave party, and so the 

ourt kep on, shadowing the pages of a law book of tl i nineteenth 
century of civilization and Christianity with a dicta that condemn d 



13 

every foot of Federal territory to the perpetual domain of the 
slave power ; and even sought to blacken the sacred memories of 
the patriots and statesmen of the revolutionary era by the infamous 
slander that they had regarded the negro "as so far inferior, that 
he had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." 

In view of the events that have followed this decision of the 
supreme court in favor of the slave power, how prophetic seem the 
words of De Tocqueville, who says : 

" The President, who exercises a limited power, may err without 
causing great mischief to the state. Congress may decide amiss 
without destroying the Union, because the electoral body in which 
Congress originates may cause it to retract its decision by changing 
its members ; but if the supreme court is ever composed of impru- 
dent men or bad citizens, the Union may be plunged into anarchy 
or civil war." 

The slave party having thus accomplished its first object, and 
secured a decision in its favor by the supreme court, bow turned 
its attention to a reconstruction of the southern party upon the 
basis of the constitutional right to carry their slaves into all the 
territories. But while Mr. Douglas and his friends theoretically 
accepted the principle enunciated bj'' the court, still, when the effort 
was made to give to it a practical efficiency by demanding a 
Federal slave code for the territories, the author of the doctrine of 
popular sovereignty again, as in the Lecompton case, refused to 
abandon his cherished principles, and the raaia body of the north- 
ern Democracy standing firmly by him, the contest continued until 
the southern party finally drove home the wedge that split off and 
cast aside their northern allies. 

And now, for the first time in the history of this great struggle 
between freedom and slavery, the slave power, that, like the 
shadow of the death angel, had followed the footsteps of the 
Republic from its natal day, stripped of all its disguises, stood alone 
to battle against the swelling tide of freedom. To such a contest 
there could be but one issue, and over the broken phalanx that had 
so long ruled the destinies of our country the aroused and indignant 
freemen of the north elected Abraham Lincoln to the Presidential 
chair. 

The success of the Republican party settled forever the question 
of the extension of slavery into the territories. The dicta of the 



14 

supreme court had become a worthless opinion, that the sovereign 
will of the people had overruled, and he Federal power and the 
Federal patronage, so long controlled by the slave party, had 
passed into the hands of the free laborers of the North. During 
all these contests, the North had remained strictly true to its con- 
stitutional obligations. The right of the southern states to the 
possession and control of their slaves within the limits of their 
proper jurisdiction, had not been denied or interfered with, and 
the Eepublican party, as the representatives of the northern will 
upon the slavery question, had not only expressly conceded this 
right, but had even ofi'ered to secure it permanently by a positive 
clause in the Federal constitution. Even in the settlement of the 
new territories every advantage had been given to the South, and 
it was only at the last moment, when the slave power, violating 
its solemn compacts and repudiating its sacred compromises, sought 
to grasp the whole domain, that the North had marshalled its forces 
along the line and said to the arrogant slaveholder, " thus far and 
no farther shalt thou go." 

While the South, however, was thus pursuing this aggressive 
policy and striving to extend the system of slavery over the entire 
country, the enterprise and indomitable energy of the free laborers 
of the North were rapidly spreading civilization over the savage 
territories of the north-west— building great cities upon the shores 
of those inland oceans, whose waters had rolled for centuries 
un vexed by the prows of merchant ships and men-of-war ; erecting 
towns and villages, with their churches and school houses, and 
rearing mills and manufactories on every flowing stream, to "stop 
the wasting of the spendthrift waters," and laying roads of iron, 
flanked with the "lightning tongued telegraph," through the 
forests and over the broad prairies of the West, until out of the 
wilderness societies arose, with all their vast industrial organiza- 
tions, and those great leviathans, commonwealths or states, were 
formed, where the republican ideas of the fathers grew into laws, 
and slavery, with its "entirely opposite ideas," was forever ex- 
cluded. 

With all its fertile expedients and political combinations, the 
South was found unequal to the contest. The vast army of free 
laborers had swarmed across the continent, and were rapidly sur- 
rounding the institution of slavery with a cordon of free states, 
confining it within specified limits, where it must inevitably die 



16 

under the natural process of decay which slave institutions, arrested 
in their expansion, inevitably entail. 

This great contest culminated, as we have seen, in 1860, in the 
disastrous defeat of the slave party — the combined phalanx of 
southern oligarchists and northern Democrats — that had so long 
dictated the policy and dispensed the patronage of the Federal 
Government, had been broken asunder, and now, as a last resort, 
the slave power rebelled against the government it could no longer 
control, and completed the sum of its villainies by adding to its 
long list of aggressions the crime of civil war. 

We have thus followed the history of the struggle for the exten- 
sion of slavery down to the last great act of rebellion, by which 
the South is striving to divide the Union and establish a separate 
government, "founded upon exactly opposite ideas," and having 
slavery for its chief corner-stone. 

There are three methods of terminating the existing war, to 
which I will very briefly direct your attention, taking them up in 
the inverse order of their merit. 

The first method is by the recognition of the independence of 
the South and a consequent dissolution of the Union. This method 
I shall dismiss without argument, believing, as I do, that but one 
sentiment prevails amongst the loyal citizens of the Kepublic that 
"the Union must and shall be preserved," even though the contest 
should continue until every field made barren by the thriftless 
culture of the slave shall be fertilized by the bodies of their rebel 
masters. 

'No slave confederacy shall ever plant its pirate flag, in peace, 
upon one foot of soil over which the glorious old banner of freedom 
has ever extended its dominion. 

The second method is by a reconstruction of the Union upon a 
slave basis, which shall restore to the South all the power ever sla- 
very possessed under the constitution prior to the rebellion, and 
secure forever the right to the continuance and extension of slavery 
in this country. 

"Would this method, if accepted by both parties, prove successful 
as the basis for a permanent restoration of peace and the preserva- 
tion of the Union ? 

A complete answer to this question would require a thorough 
examination of the great natural laws that govern the social organ- 



16 

ization of societ}-, but I can only direct your attention to a few 
leading propositions to demonstrate the fact, that the two great an- 
tagonistic forms of free and slave labor cannot continue to exist 
peaceably together. 

It was Sir James Mcintosh, I believe, who first said that "Con- 
stitutions are not made but grow." 

This apothegm is full of meaning and pertinent to our present in- 
quiry. Societies with their vast industrial organizations and varied 
laws are not artificially put together, but are growths consequent 
on natural causes. The enactments of a representative form of gov- 
ernment lie deeper than the acts of legislation, for they result from 
the average of individual natures or desires. In other words, they 
grow out of the mtional will, and though for a while they may be 
out of harmony with that will, eventually they must conform to it. 
To maintain a National representative form of government upon 
a peaceful and permanent foundation, there must be some common 
basis for political action between its leading members. This com- 
mon basis does not exist between the free and the slaveholding 
States. " The character, habits and aims of the Southern are nol 
those of the Northern people, nor theirs his." The system of slave 
labor which lies at the foundation of Southern society is practically 
limited to agricultural pursuits. The life of the southern planter is 
passed therefore in the management of his plantation, and the 
breeding, buying and selling of slaves, and commerce and manu- 
factures, science, literature and art, are left without an adequate 
field for their practical application. A society thus organized be- 
comes essentially an oligarchy. The elements of political power 
are centred in the wealthy slaveholding class, who are capable of 
acting together in political concert, and a despotism of the worst 
character is the inevitable result. But in a free society the pursuits 
of industry are varied, and various interests therefore take root and 
become centres of opposition to the undue pretensions of any one 
class or portion of society." 

The southern slaveholder is a very thriftless, unscientific, agri- 
culturist—nothing more ; with no ambition that is not connected 
with the peculiar institution, around which are entwined his do- 
mestic associations, and through which he can alone hope to emerge 
from obscurity. 

The northern free laborer on the contrary lives. in a society 



17 

where the paths to eminence are various. He is a merchant or 
manufacturer, and grows rich and respected in a community where 
honest trade and industry are open avenues to distinction. He is 
an architect or engineer, and builds ships or locomotives, lays 
down railroads, and digs canals, and carries on the commerce of 
the wurld. He is a man of science who disarms the lio-htninsrs 
with his magic rod, or binds them captive with his feeble coils of 
wire, that he may send them forth at will with his messages, that 
outrun the swift globe in its diurnal revolutions, and annihilating 
space, bring the distant portions of the earth together to hold mi- 
raculous converse with each other in the mao-ician's chamber, or 
"perhaps he is a school master and a philanthropist, engaged in 
social reform, and includes the abolition of slavery in his pro- 
gramme." 

,'^'Between such men and the slaveholder of the South, there is 
no common basis for political^ action. There are no objects in pro- 
moting which he can combine with them in good faith and upon 
public grounds. There lies before him therefore, but one alterna- 
tive, he must stand by his fellows and become powerful as the as- 
sertor and propagandist of slavery, or failing in this he must submit 
to be of no account in the politics of the Union." 

Kg combination of parties can secure to him the continuance of a 
political administration whose measures are out of harmony with 
the avei age of individual desires throughout the nation; for here 
the laws of social organism will arrest in time their supremacy. 
Congress or the President may, under the control of a pro-slavery 
minority, dictate this or that thing to be done and appoint officials 
to do it. But this artificial process by which society becomes a 
manufacture rather than a growth, cannot long supplant the natu- 
ral method by which laws are initiated, and grow out of the popu- 
lar character. The predominating element in society will eventu- 
ally break through all restraints and become the leading principle 
in the form of government. Ko better illustration of this import- 
ant truth can be found than in the history of the slavery struggle 
in this country. For many years the slave party monopolized all 
power, and moulded the public will to such an extent that the ex- 
istence of an abolition sentiment, even at the North, was sufficient 
to incite a mob. The foundation of the slave system seemed to be 
firmly laid. But as a wall is thrown down by the imperceptible 
*— 2 



18 

but steady growth of a tree, so this artificial state of society, grad- 
ually but surely crumbled away before the irresistible encroach- 
ments of the free labor system, whose successive layers were ger- 
minated in the hearts of the popular masses. 

The principle of free labor having thus become the leading ele- 
ment in the constitution of society in this country, it will continue 
in all time to come, in spit3 of all artificial combinations against it, 
to mould all our social institutions and laws ; and these institutions 
and laws being thus formed in conformity with the popular will, 
which is a product of the predominant desires of the people, must 
be inimical to and utterly incompatible with the antagonistic prin- 
ciples of slavery. Thus, between slaveholders and the citizens of 
free society a broad and impassible gulf is placed. There is no 
neutral ground upon which they can meet for the purpose of con- 
ciliation and compromise. The system which is the foundation of 
the present existence and future hopes of the slaveholders is de- 
nounced by the free laborers of the North as wicked and inhuman; 
and hereafter, throughout the civiHzed world, the tongues and 
hands of all free men will be raised against this " relic of barbar- 
ism," that is vainly striving to prolong its sinful existence by the 
destruction of a government upon whose foundations rest the 
fondest hopes and the noblest aspirations of the human race. 

The third and last method to which I shall call your attention, 
of terminating the present war, is by the subjugation of the South, 
and the reconstruction of the Union in its original proportions 
upon the principles of freedom. The successful accomplishment 
of this method requires — 

1st. The complete destruction of the military power of the 
rebel government ; and, 

2nd. The complete abolition of the system of domestic slavery, 
and the reorganization of Southern society upon the free labor 
basis. 

The destruction of the military power of the rebels is a work of 
slow but sure accomplishment. The material resources of the 
Government, with the energy, courage and skill of its loyal people, 
are sufiicient for the task ; and the South, despite the admitted 
bravery of its people, and their united and obstinate determination 
never to yield, must in the end give way to the advancing armies 
of the Union, 



19 

"With their great lines of railroads destroyed, or held in our pos- 
session, their navigable rivers under the subjection of our invinci- 
ble gunboats, and their commercial cities either garrisoned by our 
troops or blockaded by our navy, the rebel States will soon be un- 
able to maintain and subsist an army of any magnitude, and the 
entire fabric of the present despotic, powerful, centralized govern- 
ment of the Confederacy will be broken into fragments. 

The questions we are considering are of such vast and solemn 
importance, that I cannot trifle with them by the use of any idle 
words of senseless braggadocio ; but I appeal with confidence to 
the calm and sober judgment of my hearers, to sustain me in the 
assertion that the problen? of the ability of the Federal Govern- 
ment to conquer and destroy the military power of the South is 
already solved, and that the ultimate destruction or dispersion of 
the Confederate armies, the capture of the rebel capital, and the 
permanent occupancy by the Federal authorities of every impor- 
tant strategic or commercial point in the rebellious States, depends 
entirely upon the will of the great, free and intelligent people of 
the North. 

But the South, when thus conquered, still will not be wholly 
subdued. The active stages of the war will indeed be over ; the 
days of great and bloody battles past ; but that peaceable and wil- 
ling subjection to, and proper participation in, the government of 
the Union, so essential to the maintenance and preservation of a 
republican representative form of government, will not exist until 
the system of slavery is entirely abolished, and Southern society 
reorganized upon the free labor basis. As long as slavery contin- 
ues to exist in the South, so long will the main body of the South- 
ern people remain thoroughly disaffected to a Union based upon 
the antagonistic principles of free labor. Now, popular institutions 
cannot be worked through the agency of a disaffected people ; and 
a conquered South can therefore only be governed by the overthrow 
of representative institutions in the Southern States, and the sub- 
stitution of a centralized despotism, wielded by the Federal Gov- 
ernment ; or by a complete removal of the cause of disaffection, so 
that we may become a nation having but one form of social and 
political organization, and that based upon the solid rock of uni- 
versal liberty. 

This "consummation devoutly to be wished" is rapidly ap- 



20 

proacliing. Already slavery has been driven from the national 
capital, excluded forever by law from all the Federal territories, 
abolished by constitutional enactment in Maryland and Missouri, 
practically destroyed in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas 
and Louisia, while 200,000 of the long-despised black race, clothed 
in the uniform of freemen, are bravely carrying the banner of lib- 
erty into the very heart of the slave Confederacy. 

It is indeed an hour in which the friends of human freedom, 
though saddened by the loss of the thousands of brave men who 
have fallen, may well take courage ; for the rebellion has hastened 
the doom of slavery, and out of the present contest the Federal 
Union will emerge unbroken, and forever purified from the great 
stain that has so long disgraced its history. 



54 V 

























0^ .V-* % v^\»r- 



C\0 














5-^ -^^f^'^.y 




'9^. * ' <"> 






^^ '^ 







. .^^ % 











»« • 










^9 









*^<«' 









c" ♦ 





